


Shape and Colour

by sallyapostrophes



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alcohol/Drinking, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, M/M, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:28:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25283884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sallyapostrophes/pseuds/sallyapostrophes
Summary: He looked hard into her eyes, the same precise shape and color as Sirius’s had been, and that stormy grey was all Remus had left of him.
Relationships: Remus Lupin/Nymphadora Tonks, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 14
Kudos: 29
Collections: Wolfstar Hurt Fest





	Shape and Colour

The hall was long and dark and high-ceilinged. Tarnished silver sconces flickered weakly on the walls, their dim flames half-alive in the gloom. Remus ascended the dark oak staircase, walking slowly, letting his hands run up the banister the way Sirius used to, his deft, scarred fingers skimming the surfaces of things absently, always reaching. 

“Hey Moony?” Sirius asked, peeling back the velvet drapes of Remus’s four-poster. “You awake?”

“No,” Remus replied. “Go back to bed.”

Sirius climbed in beside him, ignoring him. 

“What do you want, Pads? It’s late, and we have to be up to pack.”

“What if...what if I just don’t go?” Sirius asked. “What if I just don’t get on the train?”

“You have to go, Pads. I don’t think Dumbledore’s going to let you run around the castle all summer by yourself.”

“I don’t want to go back,” the boy whispered.

He was quiet, his voice stripped bare of all its usual brash confidence, vulnerable in the way that Sirius only seemed capable of late at night, wrapped up in half of Remus’s downy bedspread. Remus rolled over to face him, finding his black lashes and the turned-down curve of his lips in the dark. He looked so despondent. It was a bad idea; Remus knew it even as he pulled the bedspread back and held out an arm toward him. It was the first time he’d let the boy closer than their usual roughhousing. It was a bad idea; Remus knew it as Sirius rolled toward him, as the hard line of his body slotted against Remus’s side, as his arms reached out and pulled him close. 

It felt too good to hold him, to watch the tension melt off his face, to watch his handsome features turn soft in a way that was only for Remus. It felt too good for it to be safe, an animal awareness in the back of his mind warned him. But he couldn’t let go when Sirius’ head was heavy against his shoulder. Five years of watching him across rooms and silently tucking away every flash of his eyes and his bright smile, watching and wanting, but never touching, and finally Remus had the boy tucked against him, his warmth sinking into Remus’s own hot skin.

He couldn’t let go. It wasn’t safe, and he knew it, but he couldn’t let go. He paid for the pure joy of that moment, over and over again, for all the years that Sirius had been gone. 

Gone. He’d been gone. Shrieking to himself in a mad, dark pit on a rock in the sea, while Remus wandered from town to town, running from the moon. A bitterness rose up his throat at the thought of it. He’d been so fucking stupid to think that Sirius, his Sirius, who had bled for James and Lily, who had bled for him, could have ever betrayed them. He’d been so stupid to think that his Padfoot could have ever…

There was a tension in the line of his lover’s body that tugged at the animal sleeping curled at the back of his mind. He bit back a growl.

“What is it, Sirius?” he snapped, striding across the tiny kitchen of their flat to where the man leaned back against the counter. 

The man said nothing, regarding him for a long minute.

“Where were you, Moony?” he asked finally, barely above a whisper.

The hardness in his gaze had faded to something desperate, something pleading.

“You know I can’t tell you that,” Remus replied flatly. 

The details of his mission were meant to be confidential, a rule which Remus would have happily ignored were it not for the obvious fact that there was a spy in the Order. He didn’t suspect Sirius, not really. He didn’t suspect any of the Marauders, would have cut out his own tongue before admitting that one of them, one of his, would turn traitor. But it was too much of a risk, divulging particulars to them. With the way Pads and Prongs drank, it would have been only too easy for the traitor to talk the information out of them. And Wormtail was so susceptible to the Imperius that everyone knew he was a liability. 

No. He could feel the way the space between them had filled with secrets. He knew Padfoot had begun to suspect him. They all did. James wouldn’t leave Lily alone in a room with him. Sirius had taken to staying out drinking all night, crashing on Peter’s sofa, or pulling double patrols, taking James’s so he could stay at home. Anything to avoid their flat, and the bed they shared, and him. He knew he should explain the absences, the way he disappeared for weeks at a time, the way he always vanished around moons. But no. Until they found out the traitor, he couldn’t risk it. If it meant living under the weight of the suspicion in Sirius’s dark eyes, so be it.

“Moony,” Sirius said again, his pleading voice cracking. “Moony. Remus. Please.”

“Damn it, Sirius. I can’t tell you where I was,” he said. “I can’t tell you what I was doing. What the fuck do you want from me?”

“The TRUTH!” Sirius roared suddenly, making Remus jump. “I want the FUCKING TRUTH! You were gone for the moon again, Remus. And another Muggle town was attacked.”

“What are you trying to say?” he growled, stalking toward him. 

“I’m trying to say that you keep disappearing right around the time people get hurt,” Sirius shot back, his voice rough. 

Remus crowded into his space, placing a hand on either side of his body, pinning him back against the counter. Sirius looked down at him, his grey eyes hard, his lip twisting up in anger. 

“Tell me where you keep going, Remus. Tell me I’m not going to be out on a hit throwing killing curses at Death Eaters and pull off a mask to find you under it. Tell me I’m not going to have to—”

“Shut UP!” Remus snarled.

He was an inch from Sirius’ face. Sirius didn’t flinch.

“Just SHUT UP! You think that I… you think I’d curse anyone else with...with this?” he said, gesturing at himself, the edge of hysteria creeping into his voice. “Just...fuck you, Sirius.”

He turned on his heel, storming back to the door.

“Wait. Where are you going?” Sirius asked harshly, as though he was prepared to stop him by force if it came down to it.

“Where am I going?” Remus asked, a mocking smile twisting across his face. “Peter’s. I’m going to Peter’s. Unless you think it’s not safe? Lycanthropy’s contagious, after all. Wouldn’t want to let the vicious animal out of its cage where it can get at poor Peter.”

“Remus, that’s not...That’s not what I…”

He looked shattered, as though he might cry. Remus had seen Sirius cry. He knew he couldn’t bear the sight of it. He turned and walked out the door, not even dreaming that this would be the last time he’d see the man unbroken.

The stairs creaked beneath him. He reached the first landing and stopped, sagging against the wall. They’d kissed here, for the first time in twelve years. After months of visiting him in that fucking cave, both of them thrashing around in the yawning rift that had formed between them and trying not to drown in it, after months of staring at the stranger who wore a defeated imitation of his lover’s face, he finally found the man inside the shell. He’d stormed after Sirius, their shouts echoing cruelly through the empty hall. He’d caught up to him just here, grabbing his wrist, and that split-second of touch was all it took.

He reached out on instinct, snatching Sirius and cringing at the way his hand wrapped completely around his narrow wrist. He could feel the bones in it. Fragile. He bit back the mad urge to laugh. Fragile...as though anything as vital and alive as Sirius Black could ever be described as fragile. Sirius stilled at the contact, then whipped around suddenly, the expression on his gaunt face just as twisted up in pain as the night Remus had left for the last time. And then, with a strength that caught Remus fully off-guard, Sirius pushed him until his back hit the wall, and then he was kissing him, rough and desperate, forcing his lips and teeth apart, plunging his tongue into Remus’s mouth. And when his shaking hand came up to cup the side of Remus’s face, it was so tender and so at odds with the fierce, demanding kiss, that Remus was helpless but to lean into it.

He’d poured twelve years into that kiss. Twelve years of wandering through crowded city streets, staring into the distant eyes of strangers. Twelve years of swallowing the bitter taste of bile every time he caught a flash of black hair and white teeth from across streets or through shop windows; twelve years of holding his breath at the sound of reckless laughter spilling out of open bar doors and echoing through train cars. Twelve years of the ghost of the man dogging his footsteps. He should have known. He should have known, or at least questioned it; he should have…

It had already started raining by the time he made it to Peter’s flat. The smaller man opened the door on the third knock, took one look at Remus, standing wet and bedraggled and miserable on the top step, and scooted to the side to admit him without bothering with their secret question.

“You all right, Moony?” Peter said uncertainly. 

“I’m fine,” is what Remus meant to say, but it came out “I don’t know.”

He felt the familiar rush of Peter’s magic as a drying charm washed over him. Peter ushered him over to a lumpy sofa—the same sofa that he’d made Sirius and James drag off a trash pile and carry through the narrow door of the flat the week he’d moved in—and settled him onto it with a blanket and a cup of tea, just a bit too milky, the way Remus liked it. And it felt good to sit there with Pete beside him and listen to him say “Moony” without a trace of suspicion in his voice. Too good. Too good for it to be safe. 

“You and Pads have a row, then?” Peter asked, his watery eyes crinkled up worriedly.

“A...row? I don’t know if I’d call it that,” he replied bitterly. “He thinks I’m…”

“A Death Eater,” Peter supplied. “I know. He’s been coming by drunk most nights. You know I don’t mind...my flat is your flat and all, but...I’m starting to worry about him, Remus.”

“Worry? About Sirius?”

“I think...or at least at first I thought it was my fault,” Peter said. “That he suspects you, I mean. I thought it was my fault. He came ‘round a few weeks ago nearly foaming at the mouth about the spy in the Order, trying to work out who it is. And he said he knew there was no way it was a Marauder, and it couldn’t possibly be Frank or Alice, and of course it couldn’t be one of the Prewett twins, they’re practically Marauders themselves, and he was just going on and on crossing people off the list, and I told him...I told him he couldn’t trust anyone. Not a single one of us, even the Mauraders. I just...Pads just wants to see the best in everyone, you know? I didn’t want him to get complacent and let something slip.”

Remus regarded him silently, listening.

“And so I made him sit there with me and run through everyone in the Order and make a list of the odds. Even us. Even...even me, Moony.”

Remus huffed out a quiet breath of laughter at the idea.

“I’m serious, Moons,” Peter admonished. “We have to treat this like it could be any of us. I made him include me too. And we sat there making a list of everyone with a possible motive. And, well…" Peter trailed off.

"It's alright, Wormtail," Remus whispered. "Just say it."

"And," Peter soldiered on, "And it's true that you have the most to gain from being the traitor. Everyone knows what Vol...er...what You-Know-Who's promised to Dark creatures who join him. Werewolves, vampires, all that sort…" Peter said, looking uncomfortable. "I mean, not that you're a...that is, you're different! You're not like the rest of them!"

"It's alright, Wormy. I know what I am."

"Well...I mean, I didn't really mean for him to take it seriously. But I told him, "You know, out of everyone in the Order, the only one of us with a real motive for joining You-Know-Who is...is Remus. But I didn't think he would take it seriously Remus, you know I didn't! I just wanted him to be more careful! But now...Remus. I'm not so sure he really does suspect you…"

"Peter. Based on the argument we just had, I'm fairly certain that Sirius more than just suspects me. I'm fairly certain he's convinced himself I'm the traitor."

"Well...that's just the thing," Peter said slowly. "I'm starting to wonder if...maybe it's him."

Remus laughed out loud.

"Oh, come on, Peter! You're more likely to be the spy than Sirius!"

Peter paled a bit, but he met Remus's eyes with a despondent sort of determination.

"Look, Moony, I don't want to believe it either, but...think about it. It seems like he disappears right around the same times you do. And there are these attacks...and not all of them are werewolf attacks. In fact, most of them have been—"

"Curse damage," Remus cut in, an icy dread creeping down his back.

"Exactly. And there's no one in the Order besides maybe Dumbledore himself that knows curses like Sirius. And every time you come back, he comes over here ranting about how you've been gone, almost like he's…I don't know, Remus. Almost like he's trying to draw attention away from the fact that he's been gone too. And the way he’s been drinking...I’ve only ever seen him drink like that when he’s…”

“Done something stupid,” Remus finished, thinking back to the months after the prank, when Sirius had nearly landed himself in the hospital wing from drinking. “When he’s done something stupid, and he’s feeling guilty about it.”

“I don’t know, Moony,” Peter said. “But I’ve been thinking about it. And I know we’re his brothers, but...we’re not his only brothers.”

“Regulus,” Remus said.

“That’s...yes. I don’t want to think he’d betray us, but what if he thought it was the only way to keep Regulus safe?”

The dread spread through him then, and he fell asleep cold on Peter’s couch, where he stayed for the next week, unable to stomach the idea that the man he slept beside was the man who had gotten so many people killed. 

He’d been so grateful to have Peter, then. Patient, understanding Peter, who always kept a spare pillow and blanket out on his sofa, who would sit up with him late at night when the absence of Sirius’s body beside him kept him from sleep. Peter, who would tip a shot of firewhisky into his mug of tea to warm him up. Peter, who was always such a good listener. 

“Maybe...I’m still not sure Sirius is the spy, but maybe...James trusts you, Wormy. Maybe you should be his Secret Keeper. Just in case.”

“I don’t know, Moony. If I got caught...you know I can’t fight the Imperius like everyone else can. I’d be...I’m a liability.”

“No one would guess you, Peter. They’d go for Sirius or me first. Or Frank, or Alice. Hell, even Dumbledore offered to be Secret Keeper.”

“So it would be like sending them on a wild goose chase. They’d focus on everyone in the Order except me.”

“Exactly! I just...I think it needs to be one of us. It needs to be family. But James doesn’t trust me. And I don’t…”

“You don’t trust Sirius.”

“No, Wormy. I don’t trust Sirius.”

Remus lingered on the landing, feeling the phantom of Sirius’s long fingers pressing into the thin skin above his hip, rubbing the thumb of his other hand up and down the scars on Remus’ face. It was a second chance he hadn’t deserved. Not after Sirius was hauled off to Azkaban without a trial, laughing the whole way, with no one to defend his honour. It had been Remus’s job—after all, hadn’t Sirius leapt to his defense a thousand times? Hadn’t Sirius taken blows for him? It had been his job to defend Sirius, and he had just...turned away. Packed some clothes in a rucksack, pulled his boots on, and left without looking back. Where had his Gryffindor courage been, then? 

He made his way down the hall, where Sirius had pushed him, peppering his face with kisses as they moved together, where Sirius had taken him by the hand and tugged him through the door of the bedroom he grew up in, where they’d pushed aside these bed hangings and crawled under this downy bedspread, the familiar motion of their bodies slotting together echoing across the years. The brass doorknob still felt just as cool under his palm. The hinges still squealed as he pushed the heavy door open. All the posters and photographs still waved at him from the walls, as though nothing had changed. As though the man were simply out for a stroll about town, or in the parlour of a friend, taking a late tea. As though the image of his body, staggering backward and falling, the cocky smile frozen on his face at odds with the hollow eyes and sunken cheeks, were nothing more than the echo of a nightmare. 

And surely it was only that, he thought, looking over at the man, his dark hair a shock against the white sheets. He slipped into the room and shut the door behind him. Surely it was only that. Surely it was only a nightmare. The man peeled the cover back and sat up, wrapping his arms around his knees.

“Hey,” he said gently. “I looked for you after the meeting.”

“Sorry,” Remus replied, standing stock-still, hardly daring to step forward. “I had to...step out. For some air.”

“It’s alright. I thought maybe—”

“This is a bad idea,” Remus said, cutting him off.

“Probably, yeah. But are you going to tell me no? Tell me, right now, and I’ll get out.”

Remus squeezed his eyes shut, breathing slowly, trying to settle the rising sickness in his gut. 

“I know you want me,” Sirius said.

“Yes,” Remus replied, not daring to open his eyes. “Yes.”

“Then what are you waiting for?”

He exhaled a shaky breath, and slid into the bed, pulling the covers around them. He pulled the man close to him, easing him onto his back and dipping down to lick at his lips. Sirius sighed as he parted them, and this easy acquiescence felt wrong. He’d always been rougher, the way he kissed. The way he grabbed Remus and held him too tightly, his grip just shy of painful. The gentleness was...strange. He wrapped a palm against the side of Sirius’ face, gripping his jaw too tight, pouring all the years of loneliness into his kiss, wincing at the way the man gasped beneath it. His palm ran down the side of the man’s neck, and over a shoulder that should have had a deep, smooth-pink scar, a relic of a time he took his eyes off the Willow for a second too long. James had borne a matching stripe across his chest once. The absence of the puckered flesh tore at the last shreds of his self-preservation, but he pushed the prickling awareness away, carding his hand through his lover’s dark hair.

When he sucked Sirius’ bottom lip, the man didn’t lunge for him, didn’t clutch him or tighten his grip. When he wrapped his lips around the man’s nipple, he didn’t throw a leg around Remus and pull him closer. When Remus summoned a palmful of oil and rubbed the pad of a slick thumb in slow circles around the puckered flesh of his hole, the man didn’t spit out the string of swears that always came spilling out of him when Remus fingered him open. He didn’t have to hold the man’s hips down, or whisper assurances to him, promises that if he would only be patient, Remus would make everything good for him. 

And when Remus fucked him, he fucked him face down so he didn’t have to look at him. So he didn’t have to look at the face that was missing a thin, silver-white scar just atop his left cheekbone, a gift from the back of his mother’s hand. He kept his eyes closed, so he didn’t see the creamy-white expanse of Sirius’ back, unmarred by the litter of freckles that Remus had once mapped like constellations.

And when he bottomed out inside him, Sirius didn’t push back into him, his nails scraping, harsh and desperate, over the bare skin of Remus’s arms. 

“Please,” Remus cried out, slamming into him, trying to break loose the roughness that seemed to be lost inside him. “Please, Sirius, please.”

And the pliant body beneath him tensed and jerked away.

“Stop,” he said.

Remus pulled out of him with a wet ‘pop.’

“I hate it when you call me that,” the man said. “I hate it when you call me by his name.”

“I’m sorry,” Remus whispered. 

The black hair faded to a mousy brown, the high, proud cheekbones rounded and the sharp jaw softened, but the grey eyes remained, stormy and hard.

“I hate it when you call me by his name. He’s dead, Remus. And I’m sorry. But he is. He’s dead.”

“I know,” Remus said, schooling his features into flatness. “I’m sorry.”

She crawled toward him, wrapping a slender arm around him. Her heavy breasts pressed against his chest. 

“Dora,” he said. “I don’t know if...I don’t think this is a good idea. I’m not...I’m not right for you, Dora. You deserve someone...whole.”

“I don’t care,” she said, her grey eyes flashing with a familiar stubbornness. “I don’t care. I want you.”

“Please,” Remus said. “You don’t know what you’re asking for. I’m…”

I’m in love with him. I’ll never not be in love with him.

“You only know half of what I am, Dora. I’m cursed.”

“I don’t care about that,” she said. “I want to be with you.”

“I want to be with you, Moony,” Sirius said. They were laying in a sticky heap, his head resting on Sirius’ bare, bony chest. He traced the black inkwork with an idle finger.

“I know it’s been hard for you,” she said. “Losing him like that after you only just got him back. I know it’s been hard. But I want to be with you. I don’t care if you’re a werewolf. You’re a man, too. And I’ll do whatever it takes.”

“I’ll do whatever it takes,” he said. “I know it’s been hard. I know I’ve been hard to live with, since...and I’m sorry. But I’ll be better, Moony. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

“I’ll do whatever it takes to show you, Remus,” she said.

“I’ll do whatever I have to do to show you, Moony. I’ve always loved you. Since the day I saw you on that train when we were eleven years old and every day after. I know it took me long enough to figure it out, and I know I did a piss-poor job of showing it, back then.”

“I love you, Remus,” she told him, her voice hard with resolve. “From the first day I laid eyes on you, I knew it. And I’m going to prove it to you.”

“I’m going to prove it to you, Moony. I spent twelve years loving you. I’m not going to waste another fucking day without you. I love you, Remus Moony Lupin.”

“I love you, Remus Lupin,” she whispered.

He looked hard into her eyes, the same precise shape and color as Sirius’s had been, and that stormy grey was all Remus had left of him.

“I love you too,” he lied.


End file.
